Beijing officially overtakes NYC as the 'Billionaire Capital of the World'

BEIJING (AP) — Move over, New York City: Beijing is the new
"Billionaire Capital of the World."

The Chinese capital has overtaken the Big Apple as home to the
most billionaires — 100 to 95 — according to Hurun, a Shanghai
firm that publishes a monthly magazine and releases yearly
rankings and research about the world's richest people and their
spending habits.

The study, which comes months after reports suggested China now
has more billionaires than the United States, highlights how
China's elite are continuing to accrue vast wealth despite a
wobbling stock market and cooling economy.

Different tabulations of wealth, such as the Hurun Report and the
Forbes list, have historically produced somewhat different
results depending on their methodology.

Rupert Hoogewerf, the founder of Hurun, attributed China's
explosive wealth creation to Chinese market regulators allowing a
flood of new initial public offerings after holding back new IPOs
for several years.

Hoogewerf said his wealth calculations were made using stock
prices as of Jan. 15, which means they took into account the
Chinese market's 40 percent tumble over the past half year.

Had the calculations been made at the market's peak last summer,
the number of Chinese billionaires would have been nearly 150,
Hoogewerf said.

Beijing took the title from New York after minting 32 new
billionaires last year, while New York gained four. Moscow came
in third place, with 66 billionaires, while Hong Kong and
Shanghai came in fourth and fifth with 64 and 50, respectively,
Hurun said.

Hoogewerf said China had a particularly high proportion of
self-made billionaires compared to the United States.

"What we showed today is that at the super-wealth creation level,
the Chinese are now leading," Hoogewerf said. "People will look
at China the same way that people looked at Stanford or Silicon
Valley in the 1990s."